A writer must “know and have an ever-present consciousness that this world is a world of fools and rogues… tormented with envy, consumed with vanity; selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions… He should free himself of all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, politics…” —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). “The nobility of the writer's occupation lies in resisting oppression, thus in accepting isolation” —Albert Camus (1913-1960). “What are you gonna do” —Bertha Brown (1895-1987).

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Congressional Hearing on the Windfall Elimination Provision, March 22th

Please tell your Congress person to send someone to the Ways and Means Committee Meeting NEXT TUESDAY, March 22, at
10:00 AM EDT in Room B-318 Rayburn House Building to find out about H.R. 711.

Kevin Brady (R-TX) has said for
many years that although the idea of the WEP is correct, the formula for it is
not. Brady has been trying to find a way to change the formula. Last year he
introduced H.R. 711 which relies on the increased employment data that Social
Security now has to better enforce the offsets (collect money from people who
might have been missed) and to lower the financial penalty for the majority of
retirees. The result would be a change in the penalty with no expected extra
cost to the Social Security budget.

Since Rep. Brady is now Chairman of the
Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, he can move things
along. Next Tuesday they will be holding a hearing on his bill, H.R. 711, which
replaces the Windfall Elimination Provision and is projected to cut the amount
of the penalty for public workers not yet retired by 50% and for people already
retired by about 30%. Although most of our Representatives do not belong to the
Ways and Means Committee, they can send an aide to follow the proceedings
and hopefully gain a better understanding of our issue.

WHAT TO DO:

Please call your
representative. Go to house.gov (if you
don’t already have their number saved on your phone) and find their
website.

Ask for their Legislative Aidewho deals with Social Security. Tell them
that H.R. 711 could make a huge difference for public retirees without
increasing costs, and you want to know what they think of the bill.

Ask them to please have someone attend the meeting
to figure out whether they can support it.

Tell them that you will call back next week to
see what they have found out.

Forward them our questions, the results
of our survey, and the official announcement of the meeting below. The call for
signatures on the Repeal the WEP/GPO petition on the White House website got
more than 1,000 new signatures in less than 2 days. Thank you.

Please send the material below to your legislator. Some questions that we would like to
have answered about the bill:

As the new process is implemented, are there additional
newly-retired people who would be included in the offset pool who haven’t
been affected in the past?

a. Would people who earned a pension
but took their money out of the retirement system after a few years now be
affected?

b. What about those people who
contributed to the pension system but never became vested? Would they be
affected also?

Would people who are already retired, and who have not
been penalized by the WEP, be affected by this bill?

3. How does this new formula deal with
low-income people? There was a bill proposed some years ago which put a
limit on the retirement amount that could fall under the WEP, e.g., if your
pension were less than $1,000 a month the offset wouldn’t apply. (One of
our members has only a $900 teaching pension, and her earned Social
Security benefits should be $600 a year, but they were cut to $300. We
have Louisiana school bus drivers on our email list who are affected by the
WEP!)…

The following is information about Tuesday’s
hearing from the Ways and Means Committee: click here.

Chairman Johnson Announces Hearing on Social Security
and Public Servants, Ensuring Equal Treatment.

House Ways and Means Social Security
Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-TX) announced today [March 16] that the Subcommittee
will hold a hearing on “Social Security and Public Servants: Ensuring Equal
Treatment.” The hearing will focus on Social Security provisions that affect
certain public employees, as well as proposals for calculating public
employees’ benefits in a proportional manner.

The hearing will take place on
Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in B-318 Rayburn House Building, beginning at 10:00 AM
Eastern Daylight Time.

Here is a link to the Ways and Means
website where you will be able to watch the hearing: click here.

In view of the limited time to hear
witnesses, oral testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only.
However, any individual or organization may submit a written statement for
consideration by the Committee and for inclusion in the printed record of the
hearing.

Teacher/Poet/Musician

Copyrights & Fair Use: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of issues vital to a democracy. I believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law.

Persona

"I want everything to be explained to me or nothing. And reason is impotent when it hears this cry from the heart. The mind aroused by this insistence seeks and finds nothing but contradiction and nonsense" —Albert Camus (1913-1960).